Christmas Tree Nail Art

Now we are on to the second nail art prompt for the 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge. Today's prompt is Christmas trees.

I decided to take a little less traditional route. Typically when I think about Christmas trees I think about green and red with twinkling lights and all that jazz. For this manicure, I decided to go the route of Christmas trees in their natural habitat before they end up on the tree lot (which incidentally I will be working at all month as a volunteer raising money for scholarships and grants).

 

To start this manicure, I began with two thin coats of OPI Thanks a Windmillion, which is the green color here. Then I sponged on a gradient of OPI Eurso Euro to create a Nordic twilight atmosphere. Then to totally complete it, I added a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust to represent the stars.



After the gradient, I found the perfect stamp to complete the look. I broke out the Bundle Monster BM-H02 plate again and stamped the trees. I used Sally Hansen OMGhost to stamp with, which I find is a great white to stamp with. Perfect for a drugstore brand!



Now I feel like the trees get a little lost in the green, but I sort of like it. It is a really delicate and a not so typical take on the whole Christmas tree nail art.

 

And I had these nails on when I got my Christmas tree, so I just had to take a photo with it. I just love it! Looks great! What do you think about this look? Like it? Or do you prefer the more green and red look?

Don't forget to visit all the other ladies taking part in this challenge below!

An InLinkz Link-up

Quarterfoil nail art to match my wallet

I have this lovely wallet that I've been inspired by for ages, and I finally had a free Saturday to sit down and really challenge myself with some quarterfoil nail art.

To begin I started with two coats of Color by Llarowe Nice Melons!



Nice melons is a bright peach holo, that is very bright in the shade or indoors, see below.



My wallet isn't technically quarterfoil, but I thought that design would be the best imitation I could do, since I didn't really have a stamp that would do the trick.



To create the quarterfoil I made clover shapes with a dotting tool using OPI Eurso Euro, three lines down the length of my nail.



Then I used a smaller dotting tool to dot again with Nice Melons over the Eurso Euro dots to create the quarterfoil.



To make the look just a little more intricate and more sophisticated, I added little lines with a small paint brush at the points of the quaterfoil.

Overall this was a very time consuming look, and I did like matching my wallet but did find this a very difficult to accomplish. I guess it's worth it to try it at least once, but I don't know how many times I'll be doing it again.

What do you think? Have you ever tried quarterfoil nails? Have any tricks to make the application easier?

Sunset gradient nails

Let me start this post off by saying, I really really loved this manicure. These are the type of nails I dream about. Unfortunately, these nails lasted about as long as a sunset. :(



Now, I'm not the best at gradients, this is really my second successful go at it. But man is it beautiful!







Application: I began this manicure with three thin coats of China Glaze Son of a Peach. For the gradient I used Son of a Peach, Zoya Heidi and OPI Eurso Euro sponged up and down (with a makeup sponge) to create the sunset effect. To top it all off I did a layer of China Glaze Fairy Dust to create the twilight stars are coming out of the backdrop.

So I determined after this manicure, that my body chemistry does not agree with China Glaze polishes. They just do not want to last on me. The majority of China Glaze polishes I own are neons, so I guess this is a fact I remember every summer. I'll keep the ones I have around, they are pretty good for stamping, but I'm so sad that this manicure chipped in less than 24 hours of application. I'm sure it's the Son of a Peach base because I switched up nothing else in my application process.

I'm still a newbie at gradients, do you have any tips for making the application go smoothly? I still haven't tried the whole get your sponge wet first thing, I wonder if that would help? Using a non Zoya polish as the base definitely helped this time (because Zoya polishes take longer to dry on me), but I can't use China Glaze again. Anyway share your tips in the comments if you have any! Thanks and have a great weekend!!!